A DJDS REWORK INSPIRED BY THEIR HOMETOWN

CURRENTLY WORKING ON

MARILYN MANSON

Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson confirms his new album, Heaven Upside Down. The new single “WE KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE” trolls the dark frenetic territory that made Manson a God-like figure to so many. The ten tracks on Heaven Upside Down were recorded in Los Angeles and create a cinematic sonic palate that harkens back to the ferocity of seminal Manson albums Portrait of an American Family and Holy Wood. On the new album, he reunites with producer and film composer Tyler Bates following an epic collaboration on Manson’s critically acclaimed 2015 release The Pale Emperor.

Themes of violence, sex, politics and romance slice through Heaven Upside Down. Manson asks his fans to brutally pledge their devotion on “KILL4ME” and delves into new genres with a trap beat on the track “SAY10” as he proclaims “I’m a legend, I’m not a fable.”

Manson's sensationalist music and art that rejects conservative values created an icon who has infiltrated fashion, television, film and music, and whose fingerprints coat modern culture. 20 years into his career, Manson is still a lightning rod of controversy and the pageantry and debauchery of his life are perfectly intact.

ST. VINCENT

St. Vincent

St. Vincent – aka Annie Clark - has announced her new album, ‘MASSEDUCTION,’ to be released October 13on Loma Vista Recordings. Themes of power and sex, imperiled relationships and death slice through the album, Clark’s first since her 2014 breakout ‘St. Vincent.’ The thirteen tracks on ‘MASSEDUCTION’ swirl with guitar and piano, synths and strings, and drum beats that punch with purpose. The album was co-produced bySt. Vincent and Jack Antonoff at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, with additional recording at Rough Consumer Studio in Brooklyn, and Compound Fracture in Los Angeles.

“Every record I make has an archetype,” says Clark. “‘Strange Mercy’ was Housewives on Pills. ‘St. Vincent’ was Near-Future Cult Leader. ‘MASSEDUCTION’ is different, it’s pretty first person. You can’t fact-check it, but if you want to know about my life, listen to this record.”

‘MASSEDUCTION’ is the culmination of years of writing, with songs crafted from voice memos, text messages, and snippets of melodies that came to Clark while traveling the globe. Special guests on the album include Thomas Bartlett on piano, Kamasi Washington on saxophone, Jenny Lewis on vocals, and beat production from Sounwave. Greg Leisz and Rich Hinman add pedal steel, and Tuck and Patti Andress contribute guitar and vocals respectively on select tracks.

St. Vincent’s 2014 self-titled album was her best-reviewed and best-selling to date, topping many year-end lists and culminating in her first GRAMMY® nomination and win for Best Alternative Music Album in 2015. Shortly after the album’s release Clark performed with a re-formed Nirvana at the 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and on the 2014 season finale of Saturday Night Live. In 2015 Clark won the ASCAP Vanguard Award and she was 2017’s Record Store Day Ambassador.

DJDS

DJDS

Sam and Jerome work in a converted medical clinic near the intersection of Wilshire and Bonnie Brae. In the former examination room, drum machines and samplers rest on sawhorse tables. A black-and-white American flag hangs over a mixing desk made from gray block and plywood. Outside their window, the green concrete stairs are coated with scars. An immense stump supports a pile of deceased fronds and deserted wet mops. The pulse of MacArthur Park pushes through a tangle of bushes and barbed wire.
In January, 2015, the duo learned by phone that the building was being sold. A reaction was hammered out on keyboard. Simple chords, frustrated but motivated. Nothing was settled, nothing certain. Within two days, the piano loop became a complete demo for “You Don’t Have To Be Alone.” It set the tone for nine more. Together, those songs became Stand Up And Speak.
Inspired or not, they convened in the room five days each week. Locals nourished the music. The man who sings the title track works as a doorman at a downtown hotel. Live drums were recorded in the living room of a Filipinotown mansion. The city’s sounds were sewn into songs. A Korean church’s morning din.
Nighttime traffic headed west on the 10 Freeway. Sidewalkers passing the Body High studio without awareness of anything inside.
Stand Up And Speak was completed in September. Beneath Sam and Jerome’s studio, a team of seamstresses makes dresses through the night. Next door, a community organizer counsels Salvadoran immigrants. To not disturb the religious services he holds in his cramped office, DJDS breaks on Sundays. The building has been sold, but no one has left. Together they wait for whatever change comes next.
Words by Sam Sweet

Alice Glass

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA

Manchester Orchestra

A Black Mile to the Surface out July 21, 2017 via Loma Vista Recordings

Manchester Orchestra had always prided themselves on their approach. The Atlanta-based band, led by singer/lyricist Andy Hull with Robert McDowell (who is also Hull’s brother-in-law and lifelong friend), had spent their career challenging each other to build a poignant, exhilarating narrative with each new album and EP. The band had worked relentlessly to cultivate a passionate fan base the old-fashioned way: releasing music, making music videos, and touring (most recently with drummer Tim Very and bassist Andy Prince). Their previous long-player, 2014’s Cope, had even spawned a cover album of itself by its creators, an acoustic-reworking and reimagining of its songs with a heavily emotional bent that they called Hope. But now — thirty years old, stable, and a first-time father — Hull found himself facing a crisis of inspiration. Since the beginning, each subsequent Manchester Orchestra album had been a grand statement for that specific moment in their career, originated in a desire to push themselves forward creatively. The desire to achieve greatness is often followed by a need for that same desire to evolve. So, for a musician used to writing out of self-reflection, what do you sing about when life is good? For a band on record number five and seeking innovation, how do you untangle yourself from the past? How do you write songs about being happy?
It was becoming clear that they required a completely new approach from an entirely different sphere and set of faculties — and, lo and behold, just such a moment arrived when Hull and McDowell were offered the chance to score a movie.
In the midst of the Cope/Hope LP release cycle, the directing duo The Daniels — who had created a dense, theatrical music video for Manchester Orchestra’s “Simple Math” in 2011, winning Vimeo’s “Music Video of the Year” in the process — countered Hull and McDowell’s request for them to work on another video with the idea of scoring the directors’ in-the-works feature film debut, Swiss Army Man. They had never written a film score before, but the pair of musicians happily rose to the challenge. The Daniels’ immediate guideline was: “Cool, don’t use any instruments.” In the project, Hull and McDowell recognized an opportunity to leave their comfort zone and to push emotion to new heights.
“Cope was very much a record where we knew what we wanted and it was a goal in our heads we could chase; that was followed by the polar opposite in Hope. But once we started work on the soundtrack, we threw the textbook out and started approaching music against our instincts,” says McDowell. “I think the score kind of was like going back and getting a doctorate. Once we finished it, there was this whole new realm of situations and sounds that we could go down.”
Swiss Army Man was a weird — albeit cult — Sundance hit, and the film’s New York Times-lauded “marvelously melancholic music” earned rave reviews around the world. Riding that excitement, Hull and McDowell decamped to a cabin near Asheville, North Carolina, with bandmates Very and Prince to write a new record. Inspired by their experience creating the score, they seized the chance to rethink Manchester Orchestra’s typical methods of working.
“We’re a band that loves to use heavy, crunchy guitars,” says Hull. “We wondered how we could limit the use of that, so that when the guitars come in they can be creative and impactful. For Swiss Army Man we had to make seventy minutes of music with our hands tied behind our backs. When you’re creating all the sounds you need just from the human voice, it allows you to rethink what is possible, and determine what is really needed. We wanted to make an album in a ‘non-Manchester’ way if there is such a thing. So we started looking for people to help us do that.”

This process gave them new ideas of how to think about writing, how songs could flow, and how to layer melodies on top of one another to propel the tune into a new emotional arena. To manifest this vision, the band turned to producer Catherine Marks (Foals, PJ Harvey, The Killers, Interpol) and began working with her at Echo Mountain studio in Asheville. “She just got it immediately. Catherine looked at us and said, ‘I hear Twin Peaks: The Album here,’” says Hull. The band instantly connected to her unique sonic outlook for the record: Marks wanted each song to sound like a different room. "Like you could understand where you were in the room and identify where each particular sound was coming from, pick it out with your hands and pull it out,” Marks explains, adding, “Being able to utilize the sound of the rooms we recorded it in, whether it was at Echo Mountain, or literally standing in a bath and engaging with the reverberation and reflections that those rooms provided -- as opposed to manufactured reverbs -- was super exciting to me.”

In addition to mixing with Marks at her Assault & Battery studio in London, Manchester Orchestra also worked with John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions In The Sky, Angel Olsen, Cloud Nothings) in Los Angeles — gathering new sounds, adding to and widening the songs’ dimensions — as well as their longtime producer Dan Hannon, who offered an invaluable perspective that only an old friend could give. Encouraged to go against first instinct, each collaborator added their own touch to the music, pushing it to places no Manchester Orchestra record had ever gone before. As Marks says, “Throughout the entire process, the band fought for the unknown and the unquantifiable.” In thoughtfully deconstructing and rebuilding their songwriting process, the band pushed themselves to create their best album yet.
“It was a test—personally, emotionally, creatively—to see how far we could push ourselves without breaking,” says McDowell. “This record was intentionally un-compromised on every level. We made sure to explore all the options and that we were moving forward with the strongest approach for each song—strongest part, strongest melody, strongest lyric.”
Describing a rock record as “cinematic” usually implies a double-length, sprawling album with a full orchestra on every song; A Black Mile to the Surface is cinematic in that it conjures worlds. There’s magical surrealism at work, with songs about a boy with no ears (“The Alien”) and the father/sleeping child callback of “The Sunshine.” There’s a story to parse here — three brothers, an abandoned wife and child, a mysterious journey through the depths of a miles-deep mine, a narrative of twists and turns, recurring characters, alternating timelines — but the songs and melodies stand on their own.
The initial creative spark for Hull’s lyrics came from a photograph. “While we were writing the album in Asheville it was snowing heavily at the cabin. I was reminded of what it feels like to live in a place that is cyclically cold. No matter what happens you can’t escape it," says Hull. “I had written a song with a character in South Dakota, so I started looking up pictures of ‘winter in South Dakota,’ and there it was.” What he found was a picture of a road with snow piled high forming walls on either side, maze-like; cars were frozen in time, the sky a white-nothing blur.

Hull began to write songs from the perspectives of different characters who might live in the scene, and found that as he was creating these fictional stories, it became much easier for him to talk about the things that were happening in his own life. In “The Gold,” a song about a woman missing her husband as he descends into the blackness of the mines, Hull saw his own wife left alone with their young child after yet another months-long tour. As he sang these characters’ concerns, he realized he was really singing his own.
A Black Mile to the Surface is a bold record of vision and purpose, inspired by and dwelling in a sensory and imaginative experience. It’s a reinvention of sorts, both musically and personally—a sort of cosmic worldview shift. But in the end, the record’s themes are universal. On the stunning final track, Hull sings, “Let me watch you as close as a memory/ Let me hold you above all the misery / Let me open my eyes and be glad that I got here.” Certainly, that’s a father speaking hope to his daughter, but it’s also a message to listeners. How do you write songs about being happy? With your eyes wide open, your loved ones in front of you, and the misery of the world waiting just outside the door.

RHYE

RHYE

LITTLE DRAGON

Little Dragon

On the surface the quiet port city of Gothenburg doesn't seem like it would harbor much soul music but it comes through in the dreamy rhythmical shifting moody creature that is Little Dragon. The four-piece band blends R&B, new wave, electronica and experimental pop.
Noted authorities on the matter from OutKast’s Big Boi and Raphael Saadiq to Damon Albarn of Gorillaz all recognize the fire—each has tapped the group to collaborate on recent and/or upcoming projects. And it seems that the rest of the world is starting to catch on to what tastemakers from BBC’s Gilles Peterson and the DJs at Los Angeles’ influential KCRW have known for years.
They might have lots of boldface fans now, but Little Dragon built their name the old-fashioned way: slowly and through word of mouth. Singer Yukimi Nagano, drummer Erik Bodin and bassist Fredrik Wallin began making music together as friends in high school. “Our way of spending time together was listening to or playing music,” Yukimi recalls of those days in the 1990s. “We weren’t so good at promoting ourselves or thinking of any kind of plan. All we knew is we wanted to just write and work as little as possible on anything else.”
After adding Håkan Wirenstrand, a keyboardist from rural Småland and moving in together at a Gothenburg art collective known as the Seal Colonie, the group took the name Little Dragon—a reference to Yukimi’s fiery countenance during recording sessions. While holding odd jobs and contributing to other people’s projects (Yukimi has sung lead vocals on different dance singles, she and Erik played percussion and sang back-up vocals with Swedish troubadour José González), the four spent all their free time together crafting their own with songs like the propulsive “Test” and the haunting minor key dub song “Forever.” It was these two tracks that made up Little Dragon’s first release, a 2006 vinyl-only single on tiny label Off the Wall Records. Though only 1,000 copies were pressed, the record’s impact was felt immediately in England, where it became an underground classic and Rough Trade "single of the week." Thereafter London’s Peacefrog Records commissioned the group’s first album. With its unusual cover artwork (drawn by Yukimi’s father in the ‘70s) and playful, imaginative videos (for “Twice, “Constant Surprises” and “After the Rain”), Little Dragon’s self-titled debut offered a distinctive and wondrous visual aesthetic to go with its unique, enchanting sound. Despite their CD being available only as an import in the US, the group sold out clubs across the country during their first American tour in ‘08. A smattering of positive press clippings began recognizing Nagano and her understated yet unmistakable voice.
Little Dragon’s second album, Machine Dreams, a more up-tempo set with ‘80s influences like Prince and Depeche Mode working their way into the mix, followed in 2009. That same year the single “Twice,” was featured in an episode of primetime drama Grey’s Anatomy, turning a new set of mainstream fans on to the group. Meanwhile, Gorillaz front man Damon Albarn tapped Little Dragon to appear on their album Plastic Beach and to open—along with De La Soul—their arena-filling world tour. Also in 2010, the group appeared on “If You Return” from Maximum Balloon, aka the solo project of Dave Sitek from TV on the Radio.
Little Dragon kicked off 2011 with a headlining tour of the U.S. and thanks to a recommendation from super fan Questlove of the Roots, a performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in March. In May, Little Dragon appeared on the track “Just Don’t” from Raphael Saadiq’s Stone Rollin’, a record some are already calling the album of the year. Big Boi and DJ Shadow called to invite the group to work on new music. And in July they will release Ritual Union, an album which finds futuristic, trance-like rhythms mixed with the soulful vibes of their debut LP plus upfront and danceable sounds of Machine Dreams.
As with each of their previous albums, Little Dragon did all of the recording themselves at the Seal Colonie, the same place where they all lived together in their early days. “We’re all about writing in our space, our bubble,” Yukimi says. “We haven’t really recorded in any fancy studios. We’d rather be in our junkyard.”
While their recordings are always impressive, it is in the live setting where the Dragon really comes alive. Seemingly loose and improvisational but actually tight as a drum, Bodin, Wirenstrand and Wallin dig a deep pocket that might make James Brown proud. Nearly as striking is the culturally diverse crowd that somehow turns up in every city. Little Dragon shows bring out an unlikely mix of hip-hop heads in fitted caps, ravers, stoners, hipsters, hippies, middle aged panthers and studious musician types. “I think that’s kind of ideal,” Yukimi says of Little Dragon’s eclectic fan base. “That’s how, if I wished for a crowd, I would want it.” And no doubt, if that crowd could invent a band, Little Dragon is what they’d come up with.

Sylvan Esso

Sylvan Esso - Radio

Acclaimed duo Sylvan Esso - comprised of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn - have released their first new music since their celebrated self-titled debut came out in 2014. The new single, “Radio,” is bold and boundary-pushing, turning the band’s signature sounds in brilliant new directions.

The 12” pairs “Radio” with “Kick Jump Twist,” a fan favorite featured prominently in the band’s live set. The vinyl comes out November 18th and is currently available for pre-order from the band’s website.

Sylvan Esso will release their highly-anticipated sophomore album in 2017.

Denzel Curry

Denzel Curry

“How personal do you wanna get?” Denzel Curry, the 21-year-old rapper from Carol City, Florida, isn’t one to sidestep the hard questions. Having recently emerged as one of the underground’s most vibrant young talents--and one of its best candidates for breakthrough success in the mainstream--it would be understandable if Curry had absorbed some media training classes, or if he had handlers peering over his shoulder, making sure he stays on message. Instead, when asked to talk about the events in his past that shaped his psychological development, the 2016 XXL Freshman circles back to a familiar topic: death.

There was the moment when, at 16, Curry was witness to a shooting inside a McDonalds (“Something was telling me, ‘Denzel, get your food and get the fuck outta there’”) and ran into the shooter the following day at school--the same high school Trayvon Martin attended. Or there was the incident in 2014, when his older brother, Treon Johnson, died after being Tasered, pepper sprayed, and taken into custody by police in Miami-Dade County. His grandmother died the same week. “I think about death a lot,” Denzel says. “The thought of it doesn’t scare me, but when it actually gets down to it, I always think about what’s gonna happen: Will I fold? Will I cry? Will I scream? Will I be silent--will I just accept it?”

Unlike other artists who are fixated on the morbid, Curry’s music isn’t sprawling or indulgent, trite or aphoristic. Instead, his acute sense for the less savory parts of his life has manifested in hip-hop that’s laser-focused, that sounds steeped in the headier approaches of the genre’s greatest technicians yet remains distinctly Southern. Originally a member of the SpaceGhostPurrp-founded collective Raider Klan, Curry quickly distinguished himself as one of the network’s sharpest pens. The collective writ large was noted for reviving flows and production motifs that had been popular elsewhere in the South--particularly in Memphis--during the ‘90s, but Denzel also cited influences like Nas and MF DOOM; he can recount in detail the time he first heard Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick Push” on the radio and asked his mom for Food & Liquor.

In an era where the divide between old and new seems to be growing wider by the week, Curry refuses to be swayed by fickle trends. Some new artists reject the genre’s pioneers, while others cling too tightly to the past; Denzel prefers to break down those barriers. His point of view is inextricable from his Southern roots, but he incorporates pieces of every region, every time period. He’s an artist who rises above his surroundings.

That includes expanding his purview to include different kinds of art, aside from his music. Denzel briefly attended the Design & Architectural Senior High school in Miami, and has retained that love for the visual arts. He says that befriending Metro Zu and Sebastian Ruiz, along with early psychedelic experimentation, encouraged him to get involved in that world. “The art scene in Miami, and just my experiences running around with my friends being the youngest of the crew was the dawn of the spontaneous realm that spawned my crazy life,” he says.

Show Me The Body

Show Me The Body

LOCAL NATIVES

Local Natives

Local Natives today announce the the release of their third album Sunlit Youth, out 9 September on Infectious Music / Loma Vista Recordings. The LA five-piece broke a year of silence with a pop up show in San Francisco in April, and the surprise release of their first new track in three years, Past Lives. Following further west coast pop up shows in San Diego and the band’s hometown (“people lost their shit” – VICE), Local Natives today announce a full world tour for the autumn, including six shows in the UK in November.

Local Natives premiered the album’s opening track, Villainy, as a World Record on Zane Lowe’s Beats1 show yesterday and today showcase a visual for the song that is as much a love letter to their hometown as it is an exuberant summation of feeling within the song. The clip was directed by Andrew Droz Palermo with art direction from Brian Roettinger.

Watch Villainy: http://found.ee/LN_Villainy

“A lot of the excitement in making this new album came from discovering how to make songs in different ways,” Ryan Hahn says. “You start thinking, ‘What do I want to hear?’ Forget about what we’ve done and what people expect. This is a song that I would want to hear. Lyrically, Villainy is about realising that you have the ability to change your situation, that you can start again everyday. We applied that to how we made music this time around. We wanted all the new songs to have a different energy, to challenge ourselves to do something different each time.”

Sunlit Youth tracklist
1. Villainy
2. Past Lives
3. Dark Days
4. Fountain Of Youth
5. Masters
6. Jellyfish
7. Coins
8. Mother Emanuel
9. Ellie Alice
10. Psycho Lovers
11. Everything All At Once
12. Sea Of Years
Sunlit Youth caps a trilogy of albums for Local Natives, which began with their 2010 breakout Gorilla Manor, followed by 2013’s Hummingbird, which earned worldwide acclaim and opened at #12 on the Billboard 200. Together, the two albums have sold over 300,000 copies worldwide.

Local Natives will tour extensively worldwide in support of Sunlit Youth, including select summer festivals and an autumn tour announced today and taking in the UK, Europe and the US. Tickets for the new shows go on sale [insert ticket info here]. Tickets to selected shows include a download of Sunlit Youth; see localnatives.com for participating dates and details.

ANDREW BIRD

ANDREW BIRD

artwork: john baldessari

With his new album, Are You Serious, Andrew Bird has widened the breadth of his art by directly reflecting his own human experience. With key contributions from Fiona Apple and Blake Mills, Are You Serious attains a level of expression that's a personal, evolutionary leap. "Here I am with my most unguarded, direct, relatable album to date," Bird says, "Go easy on me."

"I set out to make a record that's different than any I've made before,” he explains. "I wanted to make an album musically crafted like a Wrecking Crew session, where you have to be good. There's less wordplay and more intention to process some brutal times that I went through. What happens when real ordeals befall someone who has always been happy writing from their imagination and the distance of the third person? Who has time for poetics while grappling with birth and death? What's the role of sincerity for a songwriter who doesn't really go in for the confessional thing? This is what I struggled with for this record. I suppose the title could be poking fun at my own foray into the confessional realm."

Are You Serious is the second record Bird has made with producer Tony Berg, following 2005’s breakthroughThe Mysterious Production of Eggs. "Tony and I spent months preparing for Sound City," says Bird, referring to the legendary Los Angeles studio where Nirvana recorded Nevermind and Neil Young made After The Gold Rush. "We went through every part of every song, every note, scrutinizing the voicing of the chords, finding melodically interesting ways to move from one chord to the next. I decided to work with a producer because I wanted the recording process to be more rigorous. Novelists have editors and playwrights workshop their drama. Tony really played that role for me on this album.”

An up-tempo blitz addressing personal chemistry as a rearrangement of molecules, “Roma Fade” may be the album's centerpiece. Its sense of longing – "from the tips of your fingers, every strand of hair...you may not know me but you feel my stare" – is based in part on how Bird met his wife, or rather, the times he saw her before they met. “It always seemed to be at a party, from fifteen or twenty feet away,” he explains. “‘Roma Fade’ and ‘Truth Lies Low’ present both sides of the phenomenon of observing and being observed. Desire draws a fine line between what's romantic and what's creepy."

The album’s surprise revelation is "Left Handed Kisses," a duet with the singular Fiona Apple. With Bird playing the skeptic and Apple the romantic, the stop-start ballad portrays two lovers who are philosophically opposed but inevitably drawn together. It feels like it could be a lost Johnny Cash/June Carter classic.

"The song began as an internal dialogue," Bird says. "At first it was just my voice. Then this other voice came creeping in and I thought 'this should be a duet if I can find the right person.' I needed to find someone really indicting. And Fiona does the pissed off thing really well! She was totally committed. The session was a long whiskey-fueled night. We were unhinged, for sure. All worth it, of course... I can't write simple love songs. People are complex. My inclination was to write a song about why I can't write a simple love song."

"My favorite songs I write are the ones that change and adapt according to my mood," says Bird. Album-opener "Capsized" is a prime example, having been in his live repertoire for close to a decade under various titles and guises. In the album's recorded incarnation, "Capsized" is a propulsive gem evoking both the chamber-soul of Bill Withers and the backbeat of The Meters. Bird's vocals are driven onward by drummer Ted Poor and bassist Alan Hampton. The musically expansive nature of Are You Serious is due in part to ace ensemble players like Poor and Hampton, and the guitar playing of Blake Mills. "Blake raises the bar and gets where I'm coming from like few musicians I've met. He's as restless as I am and gets the odd accents and microtonal stuff that's outside western music.”

The album closer "Valleys of the Young" encapsulates the album’s themes. This is what Andrew means of when he uses the word “brutal.” “For years now, the code I've been trying to crack is how to translate plain-spoken real life into song and have it meet my melodic, syntactic standards. There are no riddles here. No encryption. I've left the valley of the young, the small-seeming dramas, the brunch and misery, for a far more perilous place where your heart breaks from cradle to grave. The musical setting for this had to ensure that both young and old listeners can relate. Tony kept making us look at photos of the dust bowl storms raging across the prairie, the ones that made Woody Guthrie sing ‘So long it’s been good to know ya.’”

Jettisoning established methods begets reinvention. This is part of the great success of Are You Serious. See how it plays out in person on Bird's 17-date Spring 2016 tour, kicking off March 30 at The Ryman in Nashville. "I never walk onstage knowing what I'm doing," says the artist. "It's a shrug-of-the-shoulders approach and people like it, it seems human to them. I began playing with the idea of reinvention, so that onstage a wild untamed thing can happen. I wanted to make a record that lets me subvert or expand my on-stage personality."A personality now ready to answer the question, Are You Serious.

IGGY POP

Iggy Pop

"A lot of geezers my age don't work out of their comfort zone anymore because once you become legendary you don't want people challenging you.”--Iggy Pop

The existence of the sublimely secretive desert opus conceived by Iggy Pop and Joshua Homme was confirmed yesterday to an unsuspecting studio and home audience of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

And now the world at large can know: March 18 will see the release of Post Pop Depression, the 17th Iggy Pop album, and a worthy addition to the 22 album legacy spawned with the immortal trilogy of The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power, spanning massively influential solo outings including 1977’s opening 1-2 combo of 'The Idiot' and 'Lust For Life', and 1990’s gold-certified 'Brick By Brick'.

The first Iggy Pop album co-created with producer/guitarist/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/bandleader Homme, Post Pop Depression began with a succinctly worded text from Iggy to Joshua, and was realized in seclusion with Homme's enlisted aid of his Queens Of The Stone Age bandmate and Dead Weather-man Dean Fertitia and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. Both became instantly integral in creating and shaping the Detroit meets Palm Desert by way of old Berlin vibe of Post Pop Depression: Interweaving with and augmenting even more superhuman than expected Iggy vocal performances and Homme's tapestry of guitar, bass, piano and backing vox, Fertitia's talent for wringing the most out of only the most essential notes worked in seamless tandem with Helders' pushing himself and his new bandmates to unforeseeable heights and depths.
The result would be a timeless work, one that sounds as if it's always been there, has existed before any of the musicians were even born-yet imbued with the ramshackle energy of a garage band that threw itself together yesterday.

"I wanted to be free," recalls Iggy of the earliest germ of the partnership with Homme that culminated in Post Pop Depression. "To be free, I needed to forget. To forget, I needed music. Josh had that in him, so I set out to provoke an encounter-first with a carefully worded text, followed by a deluge of writings all about me. No composer wants to write about nothing. He got revved up and we had a great big rumble in the desert USA.”

"This was to go where neither of us had gone before," adds Homme. "That was the agreement. And to go all the way."

Post Pop Depression is equal parts a dream come true for co-creator Homme as it is a record that defiantly takes its place in Iggy's storied discography alongside the twin towers of The Idiot and Lust For Life-two records and the mythic Berlin era of their creation canonized as much lyrically ("German Days") as sonically ("Sunday") on this new record. The album will be supported by a tour realizing Homme's ambition to assemble a live outfit worthy of both bringing the new album and doing justice to the gems and wreckage of the Ig's sprawling solo catalogue: The core band that recorded the album will be expanded by QOTSA's Troy Van Leeuwen and journeyman guitarist Matt Sweeney.

Post Pop Depression is a singular work that stands proudly alongside the best works of either of its principles, from The Stooges to Queens Of The Stone Age, bearing its creators' undeniable sonic DNA while sounding like nothing they've done before. It's a record that wouldn't exist without either Pop or Homme-and one that probably shouldn't in theory if you really think about it-but it does, and we and rock n roll are all the better for it.

…
IGGY POP
POST POP DEPRESSION

Break Into Your Heart
Gardenia
American Valhalla
In The Lobby
Sunday
Vulture
German Days
Chocolate Drops
Paraguay

GHOST

Ghost

Rock and roll exists in two worlds: the sacred and the profane. In the first, it harkens back to a time when people worshipped their gods by wearing masks, dancing, and often in the throes of ecstatic intoxication. In the second, rock exists in the here and now, as an expression of rebellion, sex, power, and even fame. In the realm of the sacred, the ego is destroyed when the god is seen face to face. In the profane, ego is the energy that get things done. This is the eternal spiritual conflict: the will of the gods versus human will. Those who can keep in a foot in both the sacred and the profane can change the world.

Enter Papa Emeritus. The world since he was last seen has changed. Called Moloch by some, the great industrial machine has been grinding away, grinding everything and everyone down in the process. Spies are everywhere. Their eyes are behind the screens of your televisions and devices, their ears attentive to every frequency in the air. Everything is mediated, pre-packaged, and pressure sealed, your lives pre-ordained. From the cradle to the grave, the world moves along as if there is free will, but this is the grandest illusion. There is no power beyond that which the all-seeing eye controls. The gods are all dead. Even art is pure commodity. But some still fight, quietly at first, but soon they will rise and make the glorious noise of the ancients, donning their masks, these nameless ghouls led by Papa Emeritus.

Above the shining city of Meloria, dirigibles float like angels, ever watchful. Under the streets Papa Emeritus is gathering his new flock. He is a shepherd of black sheep, the sewers are his cathedral. Here in the darkness they follow the path of the hero’s journey, the necessary travel to the underworld to become transfigured, to become something new. The journey is always painful, and some are left behind, but you cannot turn back to see what has been sacrificed. Along the way, his followers try to name him their god, but Papa Emeritus teaches that he is only the mask, the voice.

Myth and legend are mostly dead, but some still remember the old tales of those who tried to defy the gods. It was said they stole the fire heaven, or called themselves equal. One figure was considered so prideful he was imprisoned in a pit where he gathered a legion to plan a great rebellion. Now they are merely stories to scare children, to remind them that defiance is a sin. Papa Emeritus will steal your breath, the parents say. He will unscrew your hands and feet. He will take your eyes.

Then one night, on the high floor of a gleaming skyscraper, whose lights are controlled to come on and off with the rising and setting of the sun, something happens. A sole window is illuminated, a tiny fist raised to heaven. And then comes sound of a beat of a drum, the strained crackle of an amplifier, and the thick chord of a guitar.

It begins with a call to “Cirice,” the once proud goddess reduced to a whore and bringer of the apocalypse is reborn. The song is a love letter to all those who have been cast out, a reminder of the divine nature in all of us. Made of star stuff, how could we be born in sin? Behind the lie of our own damnation is the truth of Papa’s love. Submission won’t be easy, but on the other side is liberation.

The hardest part will be the fall. It will mean climbing down from the gleaming skyscrapers where everything is mediated, where experience is in the streets and not in the virtual reality of our devices. Going from “The Pinnacle to the Pit” is not the punishment it was meant to be. It is freedom to struggle against injustice, to march with crowns and scepters. Here in the pit, we are all royalty now.

Papa Emeritus is not here to lead. His journey is your own. “Majesty” is not the state that only belongs to him. He is merely the mask, the path into the fire where he has already been. The method is exactly as it has always been, down on our knees, imploring the gods, but Ghost will sound your arrival with voice, and string, and drum. The world is about to be electrified. You can fall or you can jump.